Saturday, September 01, 2012

NOW THAT'S A SPLASH PAGE: Iron Man Flies The 80's Skies

Splash pages, you gotta love 'em. A blank canvas where the artist can hit you with a large dose of illustrated 'wow'. This week, in the return of my old Friday feature, I'm digging out a splashie that nods to one of my favourite eras of Iron Man, Tony Stark's red and silver suit of armour from the 80's.

Drawn by Roberto de la Torre from Iron Man #28, every time I see this suit or armour or the old frisbee hips version take flight, the kid inside me giggles with glee (and sometimes the one on the surface lets out a few squeaks too).

Dropping his Extremis powers to tackle the Mandarin with an 'outdated suit of armour', this issue sure might have put the odds against Stark, but in reality the playing field never looked sweeter!

7 comments:

It always makes me laugh hard when an Iron Man writer says Tony is using an "outdated suit of armor." Because this is TONY STARK. His "outdated" joints are still ten steps ahead of the closest guy. That in no way builds any suspense in me at all.

But it's still geekified COOL when they do it. JUST for the artwork, because you get the old armor rendered with new eyes and new hands. And it's often so, so beautiful.

I do love me splash pages...but only on the first page, naturally. Anywhere else in the comic and its just lazy writing and artwork combined, taking up valuable space for the plot. The first page of a boom should always be the splash as it grabs your attention.Many a happy Marvel comic has benifitted greatly from this.

Thanks guys! TKM I completely agree. Plus I think it's more challenging on Tony to save the day rather than put him in a suit where virtually anything can happen, older suits narrow his options and bring out the hero inside.

Karl, can see your point mate nothing like opening onto a full page image title and all, but me I don't mind an internsl splashie, aslong as their isnt an overkill of them, like in the 90's, and the momment warrants it - not just used to pad the issue out quicker. Hope you enjoy some of the ones that lie ahead.

Dave you're right mr a bit more of a splash on the splash could've proven effective, but great either way!

This is from the 80's?I remembering thinking thenthat the colour work then was very one dimention,at least in the brazialian issuesthat I got. This has shadows and light and reflections on the armor.I'm VERY impressed.

Sorry Aliera you caught me out on a bit of a mix up there. The comic is from this side of the year 200 (2008 if my math is good), the suit Tony goes back to wearing in it is from the 80's. Sorry for the confusion!

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